Mayor Moves to Speed Affordable Housing : City Hall: Departments will have to meet tough new deadlines on applications. If they don’t, approval will be automatic.

To encourage construction of affordable housing, Mayor Tom Bradley today will direct Los Angeles city departments to meet tough new deadlines for expediting low-income housing projects that now face costly delays of up to one year, officials said.

Under the plan, applications submitted by affordable housing developers automatically will be approved if city departments fail to meet strict new deadlines for reviewing building plans, zoning changes, variances, environmental impacts or other matters.

Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said Thursday that Bradley’s new policy does not require City Council approval and takes effect immediately.

“When projects come through the city bureaucracy, those including affordable housing will be given the quickest treatment,” Fabiani said.

Developers have complained for many years that the city’s permit process is hampered by layers of confusing red tape that creates unnecessary delays and drives up housing construction costs--which are passed directly on to renters and home buyers.

City officials say that, in essence, Bradley’s directive will allow a developer to bypass any bureaucrat who cannot meet a given deadline. In such a case, the project would be forwarded to its next phase of approval.

“We are not just saying to city departments, ‘This particular part of the approval must be done by the deadline,’ ” said city housing coordinator Michael Bodaken. “We are saying this must be done by the deadline, or it will be deemed approved and your department will be out of it.”

City officials were quick to point out that they do not expect any departments to miss deadlines or allow projects to move forward without review.

“This will be a strong incentive to (city departments) to deal with these projects expeditiously, because no department will want something moving forward without their input,” Fabiani said. “The pressure is practical as well as psychological.”

Fabiani said any project that includes at least 30% affordable housing will be affected, and estimated that 4,000 such units will be built in the next year.

Bodaken said the new deadlines should trim up to a year off the time required for city approval of such projects. In the past, he said, affordable housing developers who applied for building permits were often forced to wait 18 months to begin construction.

Housing developers said they welcome the policy change.

Arnold Stalk of Los Angeles Family Housing Corp., a nonprofit developer of housing for the poor, estimated that he spends $30,000 to $50,000 in staff salaries “just finding out why an average, basic project has run into a snag. I’ve been doing this since 1983 and it hasn’t gotten any easier.”

Loren Bloch, a for-profit developer of affordable apartment complexes, said developers tie up millions of dollars to hold land and pay pre-development costs while weathering bureaucratic delays.

“If you didn’t have to put that money out months before you actually built the housing, you’d have it invested and be making 10% on it,” Bloch said. “That loss is what is known as the cost of the money, and the longer the city delays, the more cost is included in the final price charged to a buyer or renter.”

Gerry Hertzberg, an aide to City Councilwoman Gloria Molina, said that although Molina had not yet seen the mayor’s directive, “it sounds like it . . . forces the bureaucrats to do their jobs.”

According to city officials, affordable housing developers are often forced to wait longer than any other developers for routine permit approvals because they cannot afford to hire lawyers or lobbyists to expedite their projects.

“Right now, if you stand right on top of your project and put all your efforts into pushing it through, the truth is it takes about six to eight months to get it approved,” Bodaken said. “But if you do it the regular way, it takes 1 1/2 years.”